GOURMET EATING! (Put the calorie control part in parentheses and maybe people won't notice.)

Trying to put together some diet plans for the new year, but tired of Metrecal and grapefruit (1960s) or cauliflower and Greek yogurt (now)? The Fascinating World of Gourmet Eating (with Calorie Control) (Wm. S. Merrell Company, 1967) promises a world of gourmet dishes.

Yes, the book provides all the Italian, Jewish, German, and American favorites in a single slim volume, with even fewer recipes than you might initially imagine once you realize that the first half is simply menus for each cuisine. 

I loved the breakfast menus because their ties to the nominal cuisines were extremely variable. Fishy breakfasts weren't too hard to guess.

Yes, Sprats and Pumpernickel was a German breakfast, and I'm sure you can guess that this is the Jewish version:

It's interesting to imagine an America where people would be unable to find a bagel and have to substitute half a hard roll, and even harder to imagine one where half a bagel could realistically have only 60 calories! In 2020, a quarter of a bagel could easily have more than that....

Other breakfasts seemed pretty interchangeable.

Bet you wouldn't guess that cold cereal with strawberries is an Italian breakfast.

And American in this book must be the broader, more inclusive north American meaning, as Canadian bacon is an American breakfast. 

I liked the ways that some menus were just variations on a theme. The book suggests both German and Jewish cheese sandwich lunches, for example.

It's Handkäse or cottage cheese on dark bread with radishes and carrot sticks or farmer cheese on pumpernickel with cucumber and lettuce.

Got to love those thrilling international flavors.

The book does have some recipes, though, and they're not limited to the groups shown on the cover. The Swiss are represented with a different variation of cheese and bread:

Nope, not Swiss cheese! Cottage cheese thinned with buttermilk, thickened with gelatin, and fluffed up with egg white in a rye wafer crumb crust. Mmm-mmm!

Even though the previous recipe uses the time-honored '60s diet technique of pumping a dish full of gelatin, buttermilk, and cottage cheese, more of the book seems to take the tactic of just making servings really tiny to justify calling the food a diet food. (See the 60-calorie bagel!)

My favorite version of this might be the "diet" donuts.

If you're trying to figure out what makes these "diet," they use skim milk and an egg white instead of whole milk and a whole egg. I'm sure those small swaps make waaaay less difference stretched out over the two-and-a-half dozen deep-fried donut holes the recipe makes than the fact that a single donut hole counts as a serving.

If you get bored on your diet, just remember that approach! A single Reese's cup is only 105 calories, a real bargain! A mini has only 45 or so! Pretend you'll stop at one, and you're fine.